[Disci] Priest, Low heal and always manaless

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Hello guys, I'm having very hard time in raid with my disci priest. I usually follow a normal rotation, plea on people, shields on tank/those who need a bit more of healing. Then I spam smite. I use pennance only when I see that they need more heal. For fast heal I use shadow mend. Halo and Radiance for aoe healing. (even if I use them very rarely cause their high cost). My main problem is mana. At half fight (it happens with every boss), my mana is always almost over. I try to use Power Infusion as much as I can, combined with Rapture so it procs my shield discipline talent, but I still can't compete against any other healer. would you suggest me to respec Holy? I don't have any mana issue there, but I really love disci more...

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I'm not a raider, but in my experience with discipline in dungeons, I feel your main issue is that you're not using penance as a damage spell. As discipline, as long as the people in your dungeon or raid group have the atonement buff (generated by plea, radiance, and shield), all the damage you deal is converted to healing on the targets buffed with atonement. By not using Penance except as a heal on ONE tank, you're missing out on more people being healed with that Penance. Not only that, Penance is an instant channel, whereas Smite is not. You generate more heals with that first Penance cast then you would with Smite, as the atonement buff timer ticks throughout your Smite cast.

Also, keep in mind that the mana cost of Plea increases with each atonement active. The mana cost increase of Plea encourages one to heal through damage, as the specialization intends.

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Hello! =) SInce there's no response, I decided to jump in even though I main Holy Priest.

There are 2 questions:

1) Do you raid in a guild?

2) What difficulty do you raid?

If you dont have access to Innervate(s) on (e.g) a Mythic level, I'd suggest you go Holy. The key to do good as a Disc, rely on the innervates.

Blizzards intends (my guess) was to make Disc 50% damage and 50% healing. However, Blizzard "f*cked it up" with innervates.

There's a rotation by just using PW:S, Penance and Purge of the Wicked until the Burst healing phases. And with the innervates, it just makes it easier. You can do insane healing with it. However, without innervate on a higher level, you'll even go oom with that rotation.

Taken a look at your armory you seem to also have a really good Holy legendary. What exactly is it that you dislike about holy priests?

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Disc priest is well known for having mana issues. It's just their class. The playstyle mentioned earlier with only using your DoT, shield, and penance is currently the only rotation that doesn't consume more mana than you regenerate if you're taking shield discipline alongside double mana trinkets. I main disc priest personally and from what I've read and experienced first-hand is that smite spamming and general use of Shadow Mend is a the worst thing you can do for your mana pool. Unless you have the best mana regen trinkets available it's advised to stray from spamming those spells unless

1.) Someone is in risk of dying - Then you can spam shadow mend until they stabilize.

2.) Multiple people have atonement and your raid is experiencing a high AoE phase - Then you spam smite because it's able to heal many people.

Another thing I noticed was your comment on penance. This spell is actually insanely good for the amount of mana you spend versus the amount of damage it does and as a result healing through atonement. It's only a little bit more expensive than PW:S/PtW. Personally I use this spell on cooldown if someone needs healing and they have an atonement up. A word on Halo - It's really not worth the mana and CD unless a lot of people have atonement up. Half of Halo's effective healing is the atonement it transfers from dealing damage to the first enemy. By itself it's a little underwhelming.

Another thing to note on mana -- If you're truly struggling I'd recommend saving up enough gold to buy a darkmoon card : Promises and upgrading it to 875 with obliterum. If you're struggling on mana it has the equivalent value of a 900 ilvl cake trinket from trilliax which is the BiS for many healers. The reason is because Disc really needs that mana regen and it's one of the best in game for us right now. It's better than Elisande's trinket (Unless it's really high ilvl paired with a high ilvl amalgam trinket from BRH). If you can alter your rotation a bit and get your hands on some of these trinkets you'll see your performance go up a lot. For more indepth analysis and research join the priest discord. Just google "Priest discord." and search for one that looks like "Howtopriests' Netherlight Temple." There's a channel for disc priests and in the pinned messages channel is a post containing a myriad of guides for improving your discipline game.

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Hi there ...since im raiding Mythic as disc priest (sometimes with manabuffs/innervate, sometimes without) i guess i should help considering theres like no one raiding as disc...

first i will say something about my char my style and disc so we can find and understand your problems

i am playing disc since the beginning of Legion and even though i thought i sometimes would have to i never needed to respec on Holy since Disc worked almost always better than Holy(for me at least). I still think disc is little op since you heal as much as anyone else but also dps... sure you "only" do about 200-250k dps but saying an dps doing 200k dps more than the next best one is op while making the same statement for Healers and saying: "its only 200k dps.." is a little wierd. I played the "new" disc since release and even though beeing scarse on mana never realy had big issues with it, the main problem i saw is that disc always spends mana even on encounters with incredibly low Hps req. Im a little bit of an odball since i only have about 20% or so haste and focussing the rest on versa (since its the most reliable stat) in order to have more freedom in the way of how i heal instead of going deep haste and beeing forced into a playstyle.

so now lets start with disc things in generell:

lets start with the generell idea of how mana on disc works: You are the only healer who needs to dps in oder to heal, you are also the only healer who NEEDS to spend mana in order to dps . Dpsing costs you about as much mana as you regenerate normaly, trinkets talents etc. will give you a little more manareg but all of them combined are still doing less than your haste will increase your mana spend per second. So in the end that means as long as you do something your mana will only ever drop. Since this is the case many Discs have problems with thier mana, do to pacing probs.

thing number two about Disc mana: since mana will only drop very slow while you dps (your mana stays stagnant) most of the mana you actually loose is from applying attonements not from "using" them (via dps) so casting radiance might look like an expensive thing to do on first look, but thats not always the case since you will be spending less time applying attonements (loosing mana) and more time dpsing (mana staying stagnant) the overall mana will be only be slightly higher then other ways of applying attonements (but since you use more time dpsing every atonement you have will be healing more)

so now (hopefully) having a generell idea on discs mana probs ... here are a few ways of how to deal with them

First: Theres no such thing as a "rotation": Sure there are things like "try keeping ur shield on cd" or "try using penance whenever...." but the important parts about this is the "try" in there you are an healer not an dps things roll diferent here. its up to you to decide when using "expensive" casts like penance or radiance .Using penance on cd means you might not have it when you realy need it but casting it often generelly increases your output etc. Feel free to bend those rules a little so that they fit the encounter, your raid comp and most importantly your self.

Second: ALWAYS having to low mana: if you are having manaproblems regardless of the way you are playing its likely that you are still having trouble with the first problem. without having optimised your playstyle you will run into problems... here are a few ways to deal with those

1: since as long as you do something your mana wont increasy feel free NOT to do something NOT to smite etc when there is only low dmg comming in. theres no shame in loosing 20k dps in order to gain 80k hps...

2: Gear: try optimising your gear so it suits you, use mana trinkets that dont need to much of your attention, use elisandes trinket if you like casting shadowmend anyway, the kara trinket if moving around doesn´t seem to be a problem for you and Amalgams Spine (Blackrook) in generell cause its op... reduce your haste to suit you, the better you get at handeling the first prob the more haste you can "carry". Using more haste than you can carry might improve your learning though, i recommend using so much haste that it just feels slightly uncomfortable so that you give your self room to grow and force yourself to get better, the generell rule i set for myself is "use as much haste as you can without having to use number 1"

3: Train: as i said knowing when to cast what is super important ... sometimes you can cast radiance once but late enough for the attonements to last for 2 impacts instead of just one sometimes you heal someone but before you can use your atonements somebody else already healed him wasting your efforts and mana. Knowing how to avoid waste and how to optimize your targets alongside with knowing when you should heal six targets alot and when you should heal 14 targets a little is key for disc mana.

Third: using the right spells: some spells are plain useless in many situations. Shadowmend is usefull for spot healing but in raids u should almost never cast Shadowmend twice on the same target since all other healers are better for repeated casts, casting on the same target twice should always be your last choice of action avoid it as much as you can. Pleas only existence right now is casting it when you have just a few atonements ... since you will be casting shield almost on cd though thats almost never the case so use it when you have to move or on full live targets (just to apply atonement) otherwise use shadowmend to aply attonement since it will actually do something else than atone them... Smitespam: as i said before feel free not to ;)

well i hope i could help a little and my horrible english didn´t bother you to much...